Tracy Beckerman is Lost in Suburbia and trying to hold onto just a little bit of her former, COOL, pre-mom self!

The Trouble with Having a New Puppy in a Hurricane

About this blog

Nationally syndicated columnist and author Tracy Beckerman is \x34Lost in Suburbia\x34 ­ managing the chaos with a healthy dose of humor. Her next book, a \x34momoir,\x34 will be published in spring 2013. She contributes to many online mom sites,
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Nationally syndicated columnist and author Tracy Beckerman is \x34Lost in Suburbia\x34 ­ managing the chaos with a healthy dose of humor. Her next book, a \x34momoir,\x34 will be published in spring 2013. She contributes to many online mom sites, including www.todaysmama.com, www.rolemommy.com and www.newjerseymomsblog.com and is an official blogger for Lifetime Television's hit show, \x34The Balancing Act.\x34 She also does stand-up comedy and has appeared at venues including The Comic Strip Live in NYC and The Erma Bombeck Workshop in Dayton, Ohio. Before she became a columnist, Beckerman was a writer and producer in the television industry for 10 years, managing the advertising & promotion department at WCBS-TV New York. Tracy is married to a very understanding guy. They have two children and live in New Jersey where she writes, does battle with woodchucks and avoids, at all costs, driving a minivan.

In the scheme of things, having to deal with a new puppy in and after a hurricane, is not a major issue. With so much devastation in the NY, NJ and CT areas, I am hesitant to even mention this. However, since this is a humor blog, I wanted to share some moments that have made us laugh in the midst of the tragedy.
When we first brought our new puppy Monty home, we felt that our first priority was to housebreak him. Some people prefer to work on the command “sit. “ Me? I prefer not to have to clean up puppy pee puddles 15 times a day. But hey, that’s just me.
We decided to skip the whole wee-wee pad step and go straight to teaching him to go outside. I took him out in the middle of the night, after he woke up, twenty minutes after he ate, and every half hour in between. There was very little opportunity for the dog to pee in the house, and if he did, I quickly scooped him up and took him outside mid-stream. Rumor had it, if you picked up a puppy while he was peeing, he would stop, and so far, that seemed to hold true.
The plan worked great for a week, and then the hurricane hit.
“I think we need to suspend housebreaking until after the hurricane,” suggested my husband.
“Oh pfft. It’s just a little wind and rain,” I said, adamant not to lose whatever progress we had already made.
But when the wind got up to 45 mph and the puppy blew across the back deck, I realized we were going to have to throw down the gauntlet…. and the wee-wee pads… and let him go inside.
Then the power went out, and with it, the lights, and the only way we could find the puddles was to accidentally step in them with our bare feet.
When the sun came up and the storm moved out, I was ready to resume housebreaking, but with downed trees and power lines everywhere, it just wasn’t safe. Eventually we decided to go to a hotel that had power. But the problem was, our hotel room was about a mile from the entrance to the hotel and I just could not get the puppy outside as frequently as I did at home.
Then one night while my husband was on a conference call, I noticed Monty squat to do his thing.
“No Monty. Potty OUTSIDE,” I yelled to him, as though somehow, miraculously he would have develpped an understanding of the English language in spite of the fact that he didn’t even know his name.
I scooped up the puppy mid-stream and started to run for the door.

However, it was immediately apparent that Monty missed the memo about stopping his business when he his picked up. Fortunately I had him facing outward. Unfortunately, my husband was smack in the middle of the path to the door.

As I ran for the exit with the dog, the puppy was like an out of control garden hose stuck in the on position. He squirted left. He squirted right. My husband tried to dodge the onslaught but there was no anticipating which way the puppy would aim. By the time I got the dog to the door, the rug, the walls, my husband and half of New Jersey was covered in dog pee and, not surprisingly, the dog no longer had to go out.
With the emergency over, I put the dog down. He immediately ran across the room and tore down the curtains.
I turned to my husband, paralyzed in a state of shock.